The folks at Berkeley, trying to measure the immeasurable, have figured that the amount of information created in 2003 was 5 exabytes. That is, roughly, "the the information contained in half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress print collections." That is a very big number for the human scale.
It makes me want to go back and read Information Anxiety, by Richard Saul Wurman; I've got the original, but apparently there is a new edition updated in 2000. We do need the information out there, but we also need the tools for turning the data into information.
Charles Miller has an interesting post on ethereal memory, saying that the Internet has become his swap space. I have to agree that the assumption of net access changes the way I remember (or don't) pieces of information. My college math professor used to tell us that we could bring whatever books and notes we wanted to the final exam: "I'm not as interesting in whether you memorize facts as whether you know how to find the answer." His exams weren't any easier because of the access to notes, but it changed the landscape of what questions he could ask.
I find myself asking the Internet a lot of questions, and am glad that more information is going out there. Actually, the most interesting thing about the Berkeley story to me was learning whan an exabyte is. Gigabyte is now so pedestrian.

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